“Tea?” I ask as I pour myself a mug.
“No, I’m okay.” He watches me, and I remember I’m wearing one of Grace’s pajamas with teddy bears all over them. Of course I am.
“I have some valerian root if you want.” He gets up and walks over to the kitchen cabinet, takes out some herbs, and hands them to me. “These help a lot when I can’t sleep.”
I look down at the herbs.
“So it happens to you too?” I ask.
“ADHD can be a bitch sometimes, especially if I had too much sugar that day, and, well… sometimes my mind just won’t shut up.” He shrugs.
He has ADHD? I didn’t know, but it does explain his bluntness and the way he’s always busy.
“Yeah, I get that,” I murmur as I put the herbs in my tea.
“What’s on your mind, Tinker?” He hooks a finger under my chin and makes me look up at him, his eyes searching for an answer in mine. I don’t want to go there, so I take a step back and look away.
“Just can’t sleep, that’s all.” I walk over to the couch, set my tea on the coffee table, then wrap a blanket around myself.
“Tinker.” He stands up. I look at him.
“I know you have nightmares… you had them while you were sick too.”
I stay quiet. I don’t want to talk about those dreams. I don’t want to think about Russel now, or ever.
“I know,” I say, but the words feel thin even to my own ears, like they don’t begin to cover what sits heavy in my chest, everything I’m not saying pressing up against my ribs with nowhere to go.
He stares at me, then nods as if I somehow answered him.
“I’m sorry you have them.” He walks over to his bedroom door, then turns to me.
“Night, Tinker.”
“Night, Dex.” I smile.
???
It has been snowing since dawn, and it hasn’t stopped. I’m working the noon shift, and the bar isn’t that busy… still, the loud noises are making me tense up.
Don’t think about it. Do not think about it. It’s just a normal day… I tell myself as I pour another beer for a customer.
The bar is too loud.
I tell myself that’s all it is, just another busy shift, another crowd, another voice raised over music, but my hands won’t stop shaking. I fumble a glass. It rattles against the counter.
The door slams somewhere behind me, the sound sharp and sudden, cracking something open in my chest before I can stop it.
Suddenly I can’t breathe, the air getting stuck halfway in as my lungs refuse to cooperate, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s trying to claw its way out of me. The room tilts, noise pressing in from all sides until voices blur together into one sharp, ringing hum that won’t let me think.
“Lexy.”
Dex’s voice cuts through it, steady, grounding, something solid in the middle of all that chaos.
I shake my head, backing up without meaning to. My fingers curl into my apron like it’s the only thing keeping me upright as everything inside me starts slipping.
“Hey,” he says, already moving. “Come with me.”
I don’t argue. I don’t think I could if I tried.
